Transcript

00:00:00.000We were able to get out in the community and do a lot of good things,

00:00:03.091which is service, which is our main focus. We were able to do that and I was able to see other African American males who were interested in service,

00:00:13.115and unfortunately coming into school you don't see that readily from a lot of your colleagues, and that's just the way things are right now.

00:00:21.647Joining Alpha Phi Alpha, becoming a brother in Eta Omicron, allowed me to see other people that had the passion for service that I had, and it was fantastic.

00:00:34.335We had an opportunity one time where we got to mentor some kids who were preparing for the SAT.

00:00:42.243It wasn't a lot of kids; it was maybe two or three black males or whatnot and a supervisor or two.

00:00:51.638We sat down with them and we kind of talked with them, kind of helped them with math, which is kind of funny because I'm terrible at math so I was struggling too. [Laughs]

00:00:59.874I said, y'all have any reading questions, I got you. You got some math questions we got some engineers over there. That's what they do.

00:01:05.971But that moment was really powerful to me because those kids really looked up to what we were doing for them,

00:01:15.522and the immediate reaction we got from them was that they wanted to do what we have done. They wanted to join an organization when they got to college.

00:01:27.119It's funny, because when you do that what happens is these kids see that and they say, I want to join this organization. I want to be in this Greek organization.

00:01:35.038Well what's the first step? You have to get into a college or university to do so, so that gets them focused on education a little bit more.

00:01:43.368They want to have the fun and enjoy themselves and do the stuff that we do, but they are focused on education a little bit more because they realize in order to do that I have to get into a college or university

00:01:52.541and I have to do well because there's a GPA requirement. There's things they have to take control of.

00:01:57.376That was a powerful moment for me, and ironically one of the students that was there, a year later he was a student in my class at the first school I taught in when I graduated.